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In the early 1970s, we participated in debates on the informal, initiated by Hart for Ghana (1971) and the ILO report for Kenya (1972), and we conducted several field surveys in Africa. What has become of it 40 years on? This article recalls the founding debates, the questionings and results concerning the “informal” economy or the small commodities producer, before seeing what has become of the theoretical analysis and the operation of the “informal” today. Beyond the expansion of the field of the informal, there is proximity to the questionings and debates, while the global and national context of developing countries has changed enormously. The African continent is taken as an illustration.